The beauty below from Eric Rittenbery's Poetic Outlaws newsletter sailed into my email in box this morning, and I was propelled back in time for a while.
we do not speak of love
but all are pushed & pulled
by it
taking all forms & shapes
twisted pounded burnt
by it
like the sculptor’s clay our faces
punched & pinched
made long or ripped apart
by it
eyes pained or deep or lost
lines cut in cheeks & forehead
from it
we do not speak of love
our faces scream
of it
haunting bars &
running wild in the streets
for it
we do not speak of love
but spike warm veins pop pills
burst brain with alcohol
for it
gods & demons wrestle for the heart
of it
I can’t survive the lack
of it
San Francisco, ca. 1972
Sloan Bashinsky
Sloan’s Newsletter
After I moved from Colorado back to Alabama in the fall of 1995 with my heart in shreds, again, and my head spinning, clueless that a 4-year dark night of the soul, which had lifted in June of that year, would be followed by a 16 month-black night of the soul, which would make the dark night seem like heaven, this little poem fell out of me, which entered my thoughts after I read Eric’s love offering today.
Love without Truth
is mush,
Truth without love
is harsh,
They live together,
or die.
I started dating a woman I had known somewhat for a few years, and she became my 4th wife, and I made some mistakes with her, and the black night came, which felt like half my brain had died, and I wanted to kill myself every day for 16 months, but I didn’t tell her or anyone.
14 months into it, her back went out and a chiropractor didn’t help, and a neurosurgeon put her in traction lying on her back 24/7, and she only left our bed to use the bathroom and bathe, and I prepared her meals. About 2 weeks into that, she screamed, “What’s wrong with my back?!!!”
I sat on the bed beside her and said I didn’t think we suited each other, it wasn’t anyone’s fault. She said she thought I was right.
The next day her back was fine.
It took me 2 more months to man up and go live with a man I had met in my mother’s church, who was fascinated with my stories about my mystical experiences, and who had offered me shelter.
The day I moved in with him, I started dreaming again and the black night began to lift.
He was bisexual and was attracted to me, but I had never been attracted to a man in that way, and I was not attracted to him, and he was puzzled, because he felt sure there was something there.
Coming of the black night and off the psychiatrist’s pills was really rough. I was told in my sleep that all I needed was a tranquilizer, and a woman showed up at my mother’s church, who eventually told me that God had told her a man was coming to her, who would put God first, and her second, and I said I was that man, and she looked at me like I might be the devil.
The man who was providing me shelter bought a new home and I had to move out and I got an apartment.
The new woman’s and my passion literally was not of this world, and we often went into something unearthly sublime when we were alone, talking, cooking a meal together, talking while sitting on her living room couch, which she named “The Space,” but she was a church girl, and I felt I was in church wherever I was, and she was a capitalist, and I was a birds of the air and lilies of the field guy, and although she said God kept telling her to let me be me, she kept trying to change me, until one night God told her in her sleep, “You are not the one,” and she woke up freaked out, and we parted and felt awful.
She then had a dream in which God told her, Adam must anchor into God for both Adam and Eve, and let God discipline Eve. I didn’t like hearing that, but in time I came to think maybe it was true, because women are so downgraded on this world that maybe deep down inside they ain’t all that happy about God putting them here.
A new woman showed up, whom angels turned every which-a-way but loose and upside down and inside out for about 3 weeks, and healed her of incest with her father, which she had not remembered, and she was an entirely different person, and she became my 6th wife, until it got so difficult for us both that we parted.
Two more remarkable women came, who had dealings with angels, and we danced for a while, and then we parted, and perhaps that was the end of my romance days.
When a woman in a bridge club I had joined asked me how many wives I’d had, I asked her, “Are you sure you want to open that box, Pandora?” She said, “Yes.” I said, “Eight. One by church wedding, three by judge ceremony, four by common law.” She looked like she might faint.
By then, I understood each of those remarkable women woke up something in me, which I had not known was there, and they enriched my life, even though it was not always easy for us when we were together.
I also understood by then that my cute line that I was going for a PhD in women's studies was a pipe dream, because no man can get a Phd in women studies, only women can do that.
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